Some musings as I finish Map 3

[Malchik]

These are a few thoughts that drifted through my head as I moved up to do the quests on Map 2 (explored when first released). I have put them under three heads 'exploration and collections', 'guilds and replayability' and (effects of) 'other mods'. They may all have been discussed extensively in the past but there may be something useful in them.

Exploration and Collections.

Morrowind was the first Bethesda game I played and remains IMO the best. Exploration was fun and indeed essential if a full awareness of the game was intended. Quests could be found from people wandering in the wilderness, in dungeons, from documents lying around (Hlaalu compound, pillow invoice); powerful non-unique weapons and armour could be discovered (glass armour in a shipwreck, daedric longsword in an eggmine etc.) as well as unique artifacts to which no quest directed the player. This went by the board in Oblivion but has returned to Skyrim with quests from isolated buildings, many dungeons, and from reading books. TR is good with quests and it is true the guild quests for map 3 are not in place yet but there are a lot of dungeons some very imaginative. It is hard to imagine that they can all be used. Perhaps the odd quest starting in a dungeon, or obtained from a document in a dungeon could add to the variety? Also a collection quest or two where a fixed number of items is scattered around a particular type of dungeon (within a specific region) would also give a boost to exploration. With the museum in Mournhold perhaps there are new items they seek too?

Guilds and replayability

If the intention is to allow the player to join any of the five Great Houses I hope they are not all mutually exclusive. I think asking players to go through it five times - bearing in mind its ultimate size - might be too much of a good thing. There would be justifiable reasons for allowing the slaving House Dres to accept House Telvanni (not necessarily to like them) and for Redoran to accept Indoril - they are both devout and already jointly garrison Ghostgate and Molag Mar on Vvardenfell. But to increase replayability perhaps other either/or situations can be established. I have never felt it right that the Temple would accept proselytising Imperial Cult members, nor House Telvanni members of the hated Mages Guild (and vice versa). In time I imagine there will be Morag Tong and Imperial Legion factions. Building in some restrictions here would improve replayability, I think (no IL members in GHIndoril for instance). And there could be other existing factions developed with their own restrictions - Twin Lamps, Dark Brotherhood, Camonna Tong, East Empire Company etc. In the Oblivion mod Kragenir's Death Quest which I produced with Povuholo we also added guilds of our own. One was based on Detritus Caria of Mournhold and his collection of clutter. In KDQ this was being collected to maintain as a record of history for future generations. Another (not a guild specifically in KDQ) was a delivery and bill/debt collection agency where each assignment had a subquest attached. Overall what I am saying is the more that CAN'T be done in ONE game the better the overall replayability IMO.

Other Mods

Companions

I suspect most players these days use companions. ATM you cannot transport them as Effi-Tei will only send the player. Isn't it time that a boat connected say Tel Branora to Darnim, or Sadrith Mora to Port Telvannis so that a group could go? Companions can mark and recall so once there there is no problem but it would be nice to have one connection to the mainland from Vvardenfell.

Slaves

As a hater of all forms of enforced servitude I naturally use the Master Slave Key mod. In MW you cannot release slaves who are used on quests or cattle help by vampires (who presumably die of starvation if you kill all the vampires off). Is the same true in TR? I would not like to screw up a quest by releasing a slave later needed! But also I find it odd that I can release slaves in front of the eyes of their owners with nothing being said. This was generally true of MW too but it was not the case on the Dren Plantation and so presumably there is scope for making the freeing of slaves more problematical. Maybe the player could be teleported to jail if seen (to avoid killing too many incidental NPCs)?

Anyway, just a few thoughts to consider or discard as appropriate.

[arvisrend]

Guilds and replayability

If the intention is to allow the player to join any of the five Great Houses I hope they are not all mutually exclusive. I think asking players to go through it five times - bearing in mind its ultimate size - might be too much of a good thing.

It's not really necessary to go through the game five times. Create a character who doesn't join any house until he is really high-level and has all the spells and items necessary to rush through the house quests if so desired. From that save, you can branch.

Companions

I suspect most players these days use companions. ATM you cannot transport them as Effi-Tei will only send the player. Isn't it time that a boat connected say Tel Branora to Darnim, or Sadrith Mora to Port Telvannis so that a group could go?

Pretty sure that we'll add some boat transport from Seyda Neen / Ebonheart to the Mainland with the Almalexia release, or at latest with Heartland.

Slaves

As a hater of all forms of enforced servitude I naturally use the Master Slave Key mod. In MW you cannot release slaves who are used on quests or cattle help by vampires (who presumably die of starvation if you kill all the vampires off). Is the same true in TR? I would not like to screw up a quest by releasing a slave later needed! But also I find it odd that I can release slaves in front of the eyes of their owners with nothing being said. This was generally true of MW too but it was not the case on the Dren Plantation and so presumably there is scope for making the freeing of slaves more problematical. Maybe the player could be teleported to jail if seen (to avoid killing too many incidental NPCs)?

Slaves are kind of a mess in TR; even in bandit caves many can't be released. This is because some of the people who NPCed the caves didn't know how to make slaves freeable. We will work on this, although I can't promise it to be fixed very soon. Anyway, yes, there are slaves that shouldn't be released because of quests that use them. For example, those in Port Telvannis are needed for a Temple quest (but if you cure them before releasing them, you're fine).

[Why]

Thanks for the feedback! I hope you had as much fun playing those quests as we had making them!

More wilderness quests would be a nice thing indeed, and it's something I plan on working on later. There are indeed quite a lot of interesting locations with no quests tied to them whatsoever, and it would be great if we could implement some small hints to their whereabouts, whether through small quests or documents or NPCs wandering about.

On the topic of factions, we have no current plans to allow the player to join multiple Great Houses. As far as I'm concerned, it's fundamentally wrong from a lore point of view. Think of the Houses as more than family, they are quite literally your clan, the group of people you identify with, that accept you as one of their own. The 2920, The Last Year of the First Era series, while considered mostly fiction, has a nice example of a girl being exiled from House Redoran for having an Indoril noble's baby.

The other guilds have always been accessible in the vanilla game, and currently we don't have any plans of restricting the player from joining multiple non-house factions. I agree that certain combinations seem far-fetched though, and if it makes sense in the story we might restrict certain combinations, but in order to preserve compatibility with the vanilla material and a player's previous choices I highly doubt this will be the case. I can imagine restricting certain higher ranks in such a way though - the Imperial Cult might be very apprehensive to give any meaningful influence to someone who is already high-up in the Tribunal Temple, and so on. Besides, we mean for all of our factions to include elaborate stories that will keep you busy for quite a while, so you should have plenty of things to do even when progressing in only a few factions.

About the companions and the slave key mod, I personally don't use those, but it should be relatively easy for the makers of those mods to make TR-compatible versions, especially now that we've bundled our files into just TR_Data and TR_Mainland. We strive to be a lot like vanilla, so things like extensive companions or slave master keys are not something we'll support in our files, though people are of course welcome to mod them in. This stance might change, and I can imagine us including companions at some point, though there are no current plans for this. I'm not too familiar with the scripts that govern freeing slaves or traveling companions, so I don't know what's causing these incompatibilities, but I'd much rather see them addressed by their respective mods than in our files.

Again, thanks for the feedback, it's very much appreciated! Most of the time we've got good reasons for doing what we do, but that doesn't mean we're not open to criticism.

[Terrifying Daedric Foe]

With the museum in Mournhold perhaps there are new items they seek too?

TR won't alter vanilla Mournhold except to link it to the city of Almalexia. However, I'm sure that someone will come up with a Museum Expansion mod to include TR artefacts (and Bloodmoon too, come to think of it).

[Malchik]

May I repeat nothing said anywhere above was intended as a criticism and I hope that is clear from the wording. I love the TR mod and hope that (given I am far from young)I may have enough years left to see it finished!

All the replies are fair but I would like to elaborate slightly on the question of factions.

My knowledge of MW lore dates back to when the game first came out and maybe a bit shaky but I seem to recall Vvardenfell was regarded as off limits for a long time. When it appeared that the Imperials might get in first and grab all the land and minerals rights the houses that could did a land grab. Dres had no sea border opposite and Indoril was too weak as so many of its nobles had committed suicide. The Empire was there at the same time, near enough. It meant the circumstances on the island were not the same as on the mainland. I am not sure therefore that what may have been enforced on Vvardenfell for expediency need be assumed automatically to be the situation on the mainland. With mainland factions having their own IDs it would not matter if some of their rules differed from the island equivalents.

Be that as it may, TR is working from all the info available on Morrowind found within the original game. It has therefore introduced factions for Indoril and Dres that did not exist in vanilla MW. My suggestion to develop/make playable other guilds already in the vanilla game is not any different. There are lots of factions where it would be inappropriate I agree - Blades, Ashlanders, Her Hands etc. But some are quite important to the original game and could be expanded with the added advantage in having mutually exclusive factions.

There is a lot in the original game which comes down to either/or. Obviously the three houses but also, vampire clans, two ways to complete the main quest, fighters guild and thieves guild (easy to find you can't join the TG if you start with the FG and the end can have a major conflict), in Bloodmoon EEC you have to choose sides and you can play as a werewolf or not but not both. I am suggesting that, with a mod the size TR will end up, some of this either/or approach should (I almost feel sure enough to say will) add greatly to its replayability. Not just with the great houses.

Suggestions:-

The Dark Brotherhood. Its agents are found throughout Vvardenfell in the vanilla game although as a faction it does not exist until Tribunal. In Tribunal a lair is found but the DB must have others in the province. The DB is significant in later Elder Scrolls games (joinable in both Ob and Skyrim). There is lots of in game lore. Why not make it a playable faction? Nice conflict with the Morag Tong and potentially other factions.

The East Empire Company. You actually join this in Bloodmoon. As an Imperial guild again there could be conflit with other factions. The fact that you cannot join the Ebonheart HQ does not mean other branches can't make use of you. They do in Skyrim although you do not join it as a faction.

The Twin Lamps. You can do quests for them in the vanilla game - 2 or 3 depending on how you first come across them. There would be interesting dynamics here with House Dres in particular.

The Camonna Tong. Perhaps this is too narrow as only Dunmer can join it I believe and perhaps it is confined to Vvardenfell. (I can't remember about that I'm afraid). Still it is in permanent conflict with the Thieves Guild. Again some scope for a bit of fun.

Surely all of these guilds are as much within the scope of the TR mod as Indoril and Dres if you want them to be?

Of course I am looking a long way ahead as all these are pan-provincial and this may not be the time to worry about them. But I would suggest that they could be useful in the longer term.

As a final point is anything planned for the vampire clans?

[Terrifying Daedric Foe]

There is a quest claim open for the Helnim EEC quest line. So hopefully you'll be able to play it when Almalexia is released (although don't hold me to that).

I don't think the DB will be joinable in TR. All the vanilla DB members want to kill you on sight, so having them as a proper guild would either not make sense or involve changing vanilla. However, I'm pretty sure there are already mods that alter the DB in Tribunal to make them joinable and these will probably expend to TR when more of the Mainland is available.

[Malchik]

I'm no great fan of the DB so not asking because I want to play as a member but what I don't see as yet is a DB presence in MW. The Morag Tong was set up by the 5/6 great houses to act as a control on the amount of indiscriminate slaying all houses were carrying out. It is a mainland faction with multiple offices but resticted to MW. The DB split off from them and turned, in the words of Eno Hlaalu, to daedra worship and evil. They have spread throughout Tamriel but must however have started as a mainland based MW faction. On Vvardenfell they have one HQ and at least two bases and may be found in many locations - sundry daedric ruins, Sadrith Mora, Khuul, Pelagiad, Ald Rhun, Vivec foreign and St Delyn cantons. Severa Magia (or similar name) is referred to as the LOCAL night mother. This indicates the DB is not based in Vvardenfell. In Tribunal we discover a large base under Mournhold but there is no reference to the Night Mother there so is it their main HQ or simply another important local centre? It probably does not much matter but with the level of penetration of the DB in Vvardenfell it is not realistic to imagine their presence in Morrowind is restricted to Mournhold. They must have other bases and members who can be encountered as on Vvardenfell.

Unless I have missed them (quite possible), I haven't found any yet. This does not seem to accord with the vanilla game lore as I understand it.

[Haplo]

The Dark Brotherhood is an assassin guild that is not native to Morrowind. The Morag Tong claim that honor. Just like the Thieves Guild versus the Camonna Tong. Because the Dark Brotherhood are foreign to Morrowind, they will likely only have a base of operations or even any kind of following at all in the most major of settlements (Almalexia, for example). There just isn't a huge market for illegal assassinations in a province where there is already a well-established guild that does legal assassinations, and has for hundreds of years.